Blind Yet Seeing
by Jocund Lilac
Summary: Oneshot where I experiment with the notion that Near is partially sighted due to his albinism. Originally posted on dA, reedited. Oneshot. Spoilers for volume 12 of the manga  ie. the end .


_**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Death Note or any of its characters. They belong to Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata, Shueisha and Viz Media. The situations in this fanfic belong to me however. The sushi chef is not intended to be a racist characature of Japanese people, just a reverse weeaboo (think a weeaboo trying to speak Japanese and failing). **_

The man had the child in his eyes that glossed over and rolled back when he wasn't focalising on his favourite pastime- toys.

A genetic mixup had left him completely pale and almost blind. The only things he could see well were light and bright colours, hence most of his treasured possessions possessing one or both of those attributes. He very rarely left the safety of the SPK headquarters, and when he did, his second in command, Rester, acted as his eyes. The dull concrete infinities of New York and Tokyo didn't go down well with his vision impairment, and sometimes Rester thought of relocating the SPK into the countryside so that Near could see the bright green valleys and blue skies. Sometimes, Rester would escort Near to Akihabara to see the neon lights on every corner. The only Light that Near had ever hated was long gone, but as many were coming round to the idea that Kira was evil, it became a whole lot safer for the SPK to go out on a regular basis.

One night, the SPK went out to a famous bar in Roppongi. Rester and Gevanni held Near's hands on the way to prevent him getting hurt or falling over. It was sometimes a tough task to look after a young man with an estimated IQ of 200 yet no social skills at all. It was a miracle he'd even learned to read and master aspects of the Japanese culture that the rest of the SPK hadn't yet managed to accomplish (Rester, Gevanni and Lidner all speculated this was due to Near's half-Japanese lineage- while his parents had died when he was four, he had passed his Japanese GCSE at seven after teaching himself). When they got to the bar the bouncer took one look at Near and decided, in addition to his flagrant disregard to the dresscode, he also looked about ten (he had recently turned twenty, the legal age to drink in Japan) As soon as the SPK had left, the bouncer added them to the "Banned for Life" list.

It was getting to the apex of the night with all the clubs overflowing. The four decided that it would be better to head to a small, quiet sushi bar rather than have their leader bombarded by the sensory overload of a nightclub. There were quite a few people there, but it was a million times quieter than a nightclub. The propietor came up to them as they sat at the counter. "FORIEGNERS!" he began. "We don't make the sight of any of you around." "Sir, are you implying you hate people of non-Asian lineage?" Near said. "No, I loving them! People think I make of crazy, but I am idolise them! I restudy of the English to make talk with them!" The SPK all began grabbing plates from the belt, ignoring the man who was obsessed with gaijin. Near took the toppings off of his nigiri and ate the rice on its own. "You foriegner are weirds" the chef said. "Actually, I'm almost blind and can't see the food properly" Near replied. "I don't know what I've got. Also, I like the rice better than the toppings."

Suddenly, a man in a balaclava came in brandishing a gun. "I'M KIRA!" he shouted, most likely one of the many fake Kiras that had sprung up since the defeat of Light Yagami at the the beginning of the year. "I can kill people just by looking at them! You, old guy! Die!" The man behind the counter suddenly dropped dead. Obviously he had had an instantenous heart attack or stroke- it would have taken forty seconds before he died if the gunman had used a Death Note. Near, in shades of the late Mello, ran out of the bar with disregard to his comrades' safety. He bumped into the fake Kira and knocked the gun out of his hand. Near rubbed his head. He couldn't see the man who wore black and toted a gun, but he knew he'd saved some lives.

"Three cheers for Near!"

Gevanni had brought some beer from a local convienience store, and the SPK were celebrating Near's triumph over the fake Kira. "Even though it wasn't the real Kira, you did manage to save quite a few innocent people" Rester rubbed Near's hair and gave him a finger puppet of the fake Kira. Gevanni, extremely drunk, said "hahaha, you ish blind and you did better than the real cops!" Near looked at the finger puppet, which came into clear view in the whiteness of the room, and smiled.


End file.
